Monday, December 21, 2015

CBS publishes an interview with Apple management team, that includes a part about Apple camera team and its head Graham Townsend:

One of the most complex engineering challenges at Apple involves the iPhone camera, the most used feature of any Apple product. That's the entire camera you're looking at in my hand.

Graham Townsend: There's over 200 separate individual parts in this-- in that one module there.

Graham Townsend is in charge of a team of 800 engineers and other specialists dedicated solely to the camera. He showed us a micro suspension system that steadies the camera when your hand shakes.

Graham Townsend: This whole sus-- autofocus motor here is suspended on four wires. And you'll see them coming in. And here we are. Four-- These are 40-micron wires, less than half a human hair's width. And that holds that whole suspension and moves it in X and Y. So that allows us to stabilize for the hand shake.

In the camera lab, engineers calibrate the camera to perform in any type of lighting.

Graham Townsend: Go to bright bright noon. And there you go. Sunset now. There you go. So, there's very different types of quality of lighting, from a morning, bright sunshine, for instance, the noonday light. And then finally maybe--

CBS: Sunset, dinner--

Graham Townsend: We can simulate all those here. Believe it or not, to capture one image, 24 billion operations go on.